This is hard to envision, of course, because most cartoonists scribble in obscurity in their studios. But, starting today, the city's graphically minded nerderatti will stumble, blinking, into the light for the fourth instalment of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival.

The festival, held over the next two days at the Toronto Reference Library, presents the largest and best-ever lineup of local and international comics creators to be brought together in this city.

"I think Toronto and Portland are sort of neck-and-neck right now in terms of pure comics energy per square foot," says Scott McCloud. "And I think, with all the Scott Pilgrim action going on, Toronto's kind of white hot right now."

McCloud, a renowned American cartoonist, is one of the festival's "honoured guests" (see story, E12).

For the uninitiated, Scott Pilgrim is the smash-hit, Toronto-set graphic novel series by ex-local Bryan Lee O'Malley (who's also attending the festival). The movie is being filmed here by Edgar Wright and stars Bramptonian Michael Cera. It's something of a perfect storm swirling around Toronto and the festival, given the local abundance of graphic novel talent and the genre's continuing importance to popular culture, especially in Hollywood.

Chris Butcher and Peter Birkemoe, manager and owner respectively of The Beguiling, the city's world-class comics store, are executive producers of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, which runs biannually. Almost any comics creator in town will cite their store as the hub of the scene.

"When we started coming up with TCAF in 2003, we looked at what comic-book conventions were, and why we didn't enjoy exhibiting at them," Butcher says. "A big part of it was that there was this focus on commerce, on people paying money to get in, to pay more money to take away product.

"There's definitely a place for that, and value to that, but, for us, what we really enjoy about conventions is spending time with creators whose work we appreciate. We had an idealistic view of what a comic event would be, and it would be something that really drew attention to Canadian cartoonists and cartooning. The way the festival has evolved, we've gotten closer and closer to our initial goal."

The result is a free show that has branched into a number of other events, including a graphic novel exhibition at Harbourfront, book launches, panels and plenty of artists simply available to chat about their work.

There seems to be something for every kind of comics fans among the panels and sessions. For more information, go to torontocomics .com.

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